


Dinner at the Milligan’s

by panfriedeggs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Pre-Season/Series 01, Teenchesters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24116011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panfriedeggs/pseuds/panfriedeggs
Summary: This was the worst meal Dean had ever sat through.John gets a call, and Dean and Sam get a new brother.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	Dinner at the Milligan’s

This was the worst meal Dean had ever sat through.

The rectangular table sat five. Sammy was on his right, sullenly mashing his pasta more than eating it. Dad sat at the head of the table on his left, looking grim faced and like he dearly wanted a drink. Across from him sat Kate, who smiled gingerly at him. At first, she’d doggedly kept up an inane babble so that the awkward didn’t become all encompassing, but somewhere in the last ten minutes she’d run out of steam. Now the only sounds were utensils against plates and Adam’s occasional babble.

Adam. His _brother._ Dean wanted to call bullshit, but Dad wasn’t laughing—no one was. The four-year-old in his bright blue Batman t-shirt sat diagonally across the table from him and directly opposite Sam. He was the only one who was happy, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room.

Dean’s ribs hurt. His last round of painkillers was hours ago, and his head was starting to throb. He pushed his pasta around and tried not to look at anyone.

The meal stretched on. It felt like any minute now, someone was going to stand up and scream and hurl their plate. He half hoped it’d be him.

Finally, Dad seemed to have enough and pushed his plate away. With an eye on Adam, he said to Kate, “I’ll start scouting around for the… problem tomorrow, if you can keep Dean and Sam here.”

Dean looked up at that, but Dad cut him off before he could object. “You’re still banged up, Dean, you’re staying put. You and Sam can watch the house.” Sam muttered something under his breath and stabbed at a meatball.

Dean scowled, embarrassed at being relegated to babysitting duty. “It’s a two-man job, Dad,” he objected. “You said there was probably a nest.”

“I called up Joe Barton earlier, and he’s coming with me. You _stay put,_ Dean,” said Dad.

“Wait,” Kate said, looking shocked. “You usually take him with you? John, he’s _sixteen.”_

Dean bristled. “Ma’am, I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said flatly. Kate recoiled slightly under his glare.

“Knock it off, Dean,” Dad barked. “Kate, he knows what he’s doing—usually,” Dad said, eyeing Dean’s ribs. Dean flushed and clenched his fork, but shut up. “If this takes more than a few days, I’ll have him out scouting with me and Joe.”

“But—”

“No, Kate. You don’t get to parent my boys,” said Dad, staring at her with something grim and angry in his face.

Kate’s expression tightened, and Dean figured this was when the explosion was going to happen, but Sam cut in suddenly.

“Yeah, Kate. Only Dad gets to risk Dean’s life _.”_ Sam’s voice was pure venom. “But don’t worry, he’ll make sure you and Adam don’t get _eaten.”_

“Sammy!” said Dean, shocked. “What the hell, dude?” He cut a quick glance to Adam, who’d gone from happily oblivious to looking like he was about to cry. Dean wasn’t sure how much of the conversation Adam was tracking, but the kid could definitely tell people were angry.

John’s face was thunderous. “Sam. Go wait outside by the car.”

Sam threw down his utensils and stomped off. They heard the front door open and slam shut.

And that was the end of their first dinner with Dad’s secret family.

* * *

The hunt ended up a mess, though it’d started out smoothly enough. A pattern of corpses with their hearts torn out had parked them in small town Montana since the autumn. While Sammy worked on acing sixth grade and Dean worked on not flunking sophomore year, Dad painstakingly scouted out the nearby forests. Miles of tracks and a dozen stolen autopsy reports later, he concluded werewolf pack, at least six strong.

Dad called in Caleb for backup. With Sammy safely parked in their apartment, Dean, Dad and Caleb went bushwhacking.

Dad and Caleb went first and headed up close to the lair. Dean climbed up a high outcrop and got ready to pick off anything that tried to escape out the back and run back into town. He waited a tense hour before he heard glass shattering—Caleb’s Molotov cocktail—and then yips and howls turning into growls and gunshots.

He saw movement down below and took his shot. He swore—too early. His bullet grazed the werewolf that’d tried to make a run for it, maybe costing it a few fingers, but not killing it. Still, the silver had to hurt, and it probably wouldn’t try this exit again.

Then from the confusion below, he heard a sharp, _human_ scream, and Dad yelling Caleb’s name. _Shit._ Weighing the odds, Dean scrambled down the ledge and sprinted the half-mile back towards Dad and Caleb.

At the mouth of the den, Dad was standing and busy keeping two werewolves at bay, but Caleb was on his back on the ground, werewolf on top of him. His thigh—maybe his stomach? —look gored, but Caleb was still alive. He’d shoved the stock of his rifle into the thing’s mouth to keep from getting bitten, but the werewolf had _claws._

Dean took aim, and this time he hit the monster in the side, in the ribs. The werewolf reared back in pain, giving Caleb enough room to pull out his pistol put a few rounds into its chest.

“ _Dean!_ ” He heard Dad’s yell but couldn’t respond because suddenly he was _flying._ He crashed hard into a log what felt like halfway across the fucking forest and blacked out for a second before seeing _teeth_ inches away from his face. Then the thing shoved a bloody paw at his ribs and he _screamed._

Suddenly the pain eased off, and he should have been trying to reach his knife, his gun, but he couldn’t do anything but _breath._ The last thing he saw before the passed out was Dad garroting the werewolf that had attacked him with silver coated razor wire, its body hanging limp from its neck.

* * *

Dean was in and out of consciousness the rest of the night. His last clear memory was lying in the back seat of the Impala watching Dad drive to the emergency room, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, Caleb riding shotgun, silent and slumped against the door. Dean must have been unconscious when they got to the hospital because his ribs got fixed and he didn’t remember it hurting.

Nurses came in and out of his hospital room to wake him up, and he thought he heard Dad talking to a doctor at some point. He vaguely remembered Sammy tucked up small and looking scared in the chair beside his hospital bed. Dean tried to reassure him, but his tongue got stuck to the roof of his mouth and he slid back to sleep before he could fix it.

He finally woke up for real late in the afternoon. Sammy was gone, and Dad was sitting in his chair, red-eyed and cursing softly under his breath. When he noticed Dean was awake, Dad got up and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“Don’t you ever do anything that stupid again. If I put you somewhere, you stay there,” Dad said, low and rough. “Do you hear me, Dean?”

Dean swallowed to get some moisture down his throat. “Yes, sir,” he croaked.

Dad didn’t say anything else. Just looked at him, gripped him tighter for a moment, and then turned and stumbled out of the room.

Dean was discharged the same day, and Dad silently packed him and Sam into the Impala to head home. Caleb was already gone.

“He said to tell you, ‘thanks,’” Sam said when it was just the two of them back at the apartment. Caleb had gotten patched up the same night and took off once he heard that Dean would be okay. “I think he wanted to tell you himself, but Dad looked mad,” continued Sam, scowling.

“What’s that face for?” Dean asked, trying to get comfortable with his lumpy pillow.

“Nothing,” lied Sam, snippy. But he got up and grabbed Dean the throw pillows from the couch in the living room. 

Dean was too tired to figure out what the deal with Sam was right then, but over the next couple of weeks he wished he’d sucked it up and made the kid talk. Something must have happened at the hospital, because Sam and Dad…

Sam, well, Sam was a kid, so if he had to be told a couple times to do something or to pipe down, Dean figured that was pretty normal for an eleven-year-old. He was bratty at times, but he usually wasn’t _mean_ about it.

Now though, it seemed like he and Dad couldn’t get through an entire day without arguing. Sam would complain constantly about his training and refuse to help with chores or clean up after himself. He’d talk back to Dad about _everything—_ school, their training, the baseball game on TV—it really didn’t seem to matter what. He never missed a chance to say something spiteful.

And Dad just fell for it. At first, he just forced Sam to train more, but that only made Sam more belligerent. Dad just got more and more irritated as the days went on, until he started sniping back at Sam, and every meal with the both of them was conducted in icy silence.

Dean didn’t know what the hell was going on. Asking Dad wouldn’t get him any answers. Dad wasn’t really talking to him after his fuck up on that hunt. It wasn’t like they ignored each other, but Dad was keeping his distance and Dean wasn’t sure how to broach “Sam’s being a dick, do you know why and what the hell happened?”

Asking Sam was no good either. The kid refused to say, no matter how much Dean badgered. Dean didn’t think Sam was angry at him personally, but sometimes Sam just got so angry at everything that he got sullen and bitchy with Dean, too. It led to more than a couple fights with one or both of them storming out, but unlike with Dad, Sam usually came back quiet and subdued, though he never apologized.

All in all, Dean couldn’t wait until they packed up and left this town far behind them. A fresh start sounded _fantastic._

That was the situation when Dad got the call.

Dean and Sam were in the living room. Dean was watching some rerun and ignoring his homework because he was pretty sure Dad was just waiting for his ribs to heal better before they moved. Sam was obstinately doing his math homework, even though he hated math and Dean had told him not to bother if it was going to make him so damn cranky. That just made Sam even _more_ cranky, especially when he noticed Dean’s textbooks collecting dust underneath the sofa.

He didn’t hear any of the call, but when Dad stepped out from his bedroom, he looked pale and shocked, cellphone still held tight in one hand. Running a hand over his face, he said shortly, “Both of you, pack up. We’re leaving in an hour.”

“No way!” Sam yelled, quick to anger. “I have school tomorrow, you can’t just—”

“Sam, just _shut up!”_ Dad yelled back. “If I hear one more word out of you, I’m going to beat you bloody!”

No one moved. The laugh-track from the sitcom blared jarringly. Sam stared at Dad, wide-eyed and afraid. Dean tensed and wondered if he needed to get between the two. Dad had beaten both of them before for getting out of hand, but not in some years now, and he’d never seemed so enraged.

Finally, Dad turned around and went back into his bedroom. After a beat, Sam stomped to the room he and Dean shared, and Dean followed after him. They had packing to do.

* * *

Dad sent Sam back inside the house maybe half-an-hour later. If possible, Sam looked even _more_ angry, his body practically vibrating with tension. His eyes were red but he wasn’t crying. He probably just got a talking-to. Thirty minutes wasn’t enough time to make training really work as a punishment, and Dean guessed Dad wouldn’t beat him in front of his _girlfriend’s_ house.

Good fuck. Now that he knew what the call was about, Dean wasn’t surprised by Dad’s short fuse. Or that they drove sixteen hours straight to Windom, barely stopping.

Still. His ribs hurt, even after trading with Sam for the backseat so that he could lay down.

“Sammy,” he called softly. “Here, help me with these sheets.” They were staying here for the night, so Kate had got him bedsheets for the pull-out sofa bed he’d be sharing with Sam. Dad would be sleeping in the upstairs guest bedroom.

For a second Sam looked like he might pitch a fit or break into tears, but then his shoulders slumped and we went to grab the opposite corners of the sheet Dean was holding. They worked in silence until Adam ran downstairs, hair wet after his bath, Kate following slowly behind him. Dean tensed unconsciously when he saw them.

She smiled wanly at the two of them. “It’s Adam’s bedtime, and I’m going to lie down too. I just wanted to say goodnight.”

“Goodnight, ma’am, thank you for dinner,” said Dean, mustering up the persona he saved for teachers and social workers. It definitely wasn’t his best effort, because Kate actually winced slightly.

“Right, well, when your father gets back in, please lock up,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, we’ll make sure the house is secure,” Dean said.

Kate gave them another painful smile. “Say ‘goodnight,’ Adam.”

Adam chanted something that sounded like “Night night night,” but let himself be corralled out of the room while Dean and Sam gave their own half-hearted “goodnights.”

It was only 8 o’clock, but this wasn’t their space and there wasn’t anything else to do, so he and Sam got into bed and turned on the TV. Dad got in a bit later after doing who knew what and told them to salt the downstairs windows, and then disappeared upstairs.

Dean was settling back into bed after putting away the salt canister when Sammy asked quietly, “Dean, what’s going to happen?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know, Sammy.”

There was a framed picture of Kate and Adam on the wall. Dean had always thought that he looked more like Mom, while Sammy took after Dad. But maybe he was more like Dad than he realized, because Adam kinda looked like him. Or it might just be that Dad had a type—which was not something he wanted to think about—but he didn’t doubt that Adam was Dad’s kid.

But what did this mean for him and Sammy? Kate was a _civilian_ with a house and a job. When this hunt was over, was Dad just going to leave her and Adam? That flew in the face of everything Dad had ever said about putting family first, about not abandoning family. But Dean couldn’t imagine Dad giving up hunting, either. Hell, Dean couldn’t imagine _himself_ giving up hunting. It was why they lived the way they lived, it was what he’d been training for since he was four-years-old and a demon tore apart his family.

At Sam’s nod he flicked off the lights and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, thoughts buzzing. Sometime later he felt Sammy shuffle closer and bury his face into his side. He lifted his arm out of the way so that Sam could get closer and settled it across Sammy’s back. Eventually, they both fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure I'm going to finish this one because I just see this story getting more and more depressing, but I liked this first chapter well enough to post.


End file.
